The second is that it puts her (Moore) in a classic no-win position. If Trump wins, she’s on the losing side, and Evangelicals are too busy running a popularity contest to want to be there. If Hillary wins, she’s going to eventually have to explain the bad consequences of an inevitable kulturkampf which is coming in a Clinton presidency, or that the neocons are mostly behind her because they think she’ll get us into another war.

Given Trump’s nature, a more sensible approach would have been for Christian leaders to have made the decision on practical grounds and skip the gaudy rhetoric. (After all, choosing the candidate least likely to throw you in jail isn’t insignificant, is it?) But Moore on the one side and leaders like the Jr. Jerry Falwell on the other couldn’t resist grandstanding the issue; since Moore is on the losing side, he will have to bear the worst of the blowback.

The biggest threat to Evangelicals of a Trump presidency is the one not verbalised: the nature of success. Evangelicals have told the country for years that their clean-scrubbed ideal is the best way to run lives and nations. Trump may well prove successful, but it won’t be clean-scrubbed by any stretch of the imagination. Being put in the situation where the Evangelical way isn’t the “way up” on either side of the street is a dangerous place in these United States. (Mormonism is in the same place, which is why they waited so late to break for Trump; Mitt Romney is the first casualty of that situation.)

Which leads me back to another question: after this boffo performance by Evangelical leadership, you guys sure you want to repeal the Johnson Amendment?